The Scarab Lives!
The Scarab Lives! is the first episode of the original half-hour, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo. Premise The titular character of Shaggy and Scooby's favorite comic book The Blue Scarab, comes to life, and haunts his creator, Jerry Sloan. Synopsis Jerry Sloan, a cartoonist, is being menaced by his own comic book creation, the Blue Scarab, a superhero, who is forcing Sloan to stop drawing comic books of the Scarab. The gang and their new friend, Scooby's nephew who wants to fight monsters and ghosts, Scrappy-Doo, hear about the menace from a newspaper in the maltshop from a newspaper. Daphne thinks it's a publicity stunt, but Scrappy believes it and they decide to help, since The Blue Scarab is Shaggy and Scooby's favorite comic book. After they interview Sloane, Scooby and Shaggy stay at the studio, while Daphne, Velma, and Fred talk to Jerry Sloan's publisher, Mr. Hardy. Mr. Hardy tells the gang if Sloan doesn't keep writing comics, he'll be fired! Meanwhile, at their studio, the Blue Scarab returns, threatening Sloan to stop making the comics and if he doesn't, he will turn to a life of crime, and then the Blue Scarab vanishes just as Fred and the girls arrive. Scrappy chases the Blue Scarab as he is leaving, and tries to catch him, but when the dust clears, it's discovered that he accidentally caught Howard Gruger, who quits because of the Scarab business. Shaggy discovers that the Blue Scarab is doing the same thing that the character is doing in an unpublished comic book of Sloan's, turning to a life of crime, almost as if the real-life Scarab is acting out the unpublished comic. Sloan tells the gang the only person who has read the unpublished comic is Mr. Hardy. The Blue Scarab begins a crime spree across town, robbing a jewelry store, then a bank and then the local museum. The gang followed the Scarab to the museum, ordering Scrappy to stay behind for his safety. However, the Scarab, pushes a gargoyle off the roof to crush Scrappy. Scooby saved Scrappy just in time, and the gang spotted the Scarab on the roof, and began to pursue him. Scooby tells Scrappy to stay behind, much to his dismay. But, comes up with an idea to trap the Scarab. The Scarab escapes from the gang, leading them to split-up. Shaggy and Scooby stumbled onto Scrappy's trap, which sends Scooby into the fountain. Scrappy leads the others to the fountain thinking he's caught the Scarab. Only to learn that he caught Scooby by mistake. Back in Sloan's office, the gang tries to figure out where the Scarab could be heading next, after hearing that Sloan has quit until the Scarab is captured. Velma deduces that the Scarab should be at the newspaper printing factory, and they follow him there to capture him. They find him in the machinery room, and Shaggy, Scooby, and Scrappy accidentally wind up on a conveyor belt, heading towards a machine with a sharp blade coming at them. Scooby manages to jump off the top and grabs Shaggy with his feet, who in turn grabs Scrappy with his feet. Scrappy then leaps off and land on the Scarab shoulders, and holds his hands over his eyes. Shaggy and Scooby land on a roll of unprinted paper and manage to steer it towards the Blue Scarab, which wraps the menace up and captures him. Back at the studio, the gang explain the clues that helped them figure out what was going on. Because of the crimes, whoever was pretending to be the Scarab, had to have read the unpublished comic. Their second clue is that whoever it was might be a good artist. The Scarab was painted pretty well on the wall. It could have been Sloan's competitor, Floyd Hotchkiss, the best artist in town. But their last clue is the Blue Scarab's disappearance in the hallway. And the only person in the hall was Sloan's assistant, Howard Gruger; Sloan unmasks the Scarab as Gruger. He padded his suit, and loaded it with gadgets like Sloan created in his comic. Grueger was sick and tired of being Sloan's unknown assistant, and dressed up like the Blue Scarab to destroy the Scarab so he could create his own character. Characters Main characters: * Mystery Inc. ** Scooby-Doo ** Scrappy-Doo ** Shaggy Rogers ** Fred Jones ** Daphne Blake ** Velma Dinkley Supporting characters: * Jerry Sloan * Mr. Hardy * Floyd Hotchkiss Villains: * Blue Scarab * Howard Gruger Other characters: * Man on radio * Romeo Jewelry security guard * Yogi Bear * Police officer Locations * United States ** Lake City *** Jerry Sloan's studio *** Malt shop *** Press room *** Romeo Jewelry *** Lake City Museum * Brazil Objects * Mango malts * Banana splits * Comics Vehicles * The Mystery Machine Suspects Culprits Cast Notes/trivia * The episode was adapted from Mark of the Scarab, Mark Evanier's own comic story written for Gold Key Comics' ''Scooby Doo... Where Are You!'' #24.Evanier, Mark (June 30, 2013). Scrappy Days: The Birth of Scrappy Doo and What I Had to Do with It: Chapter Four. News From ME. * Adding Scrappy was the result of trying to keep Scooby-Doo alive. If the "new element" of Scrappy hadn't impressed ABC, otherwise the series wouldn't have been greenlit/renewed,Evanier, Mark (June 30, 2013). Scrappy Days: The Birth of Scrappy Doo and What I Had to Do with It: Chapter Two. News From ME. and another show would take its place (also written by Evanier). In some respect, it was a pilot, and not just another episode, so Evanier's agent had to negotiate a higher pay than usual with Business Affairs for Hanna-Barbera. This wasn't agreed on, and Evanier was fired until (eighteen minutes) later, when Joseph Barbera personally stepped in to sort things out. * His "origin" was in fact in the opening, where Scooby had to collect Scrappy from a train station, where he'd been parceled away in a wooden crate, with eye holes (why or who put him in there is unknown). It then basically sets up the premise, by having the two of them meeting real monsters, that Scrappy wants to take on, where as Scooby tries to avoid them and keep Scrappy away from them, too. All the monsters end up being easy to defeat, from a mummy's bandages unwrapping until there's nothing there or a scarecrow losing its pumpkin head. Scooby eventually gets the both of them in the waiting area (where the rest of the gang have stayed the entire time), and collapses. ** Scrappy was eventually given a true origin of sorts (aside of the fact it was his birth) in the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo short, Scrappy's Birthday. On Scrappy-Doo's birthday, Scooby and Shaggy flashback to when Scrappy was born, and after getting them into grief with an angry orderly, declares to his mom that he wants to join them; implying that it's always just been Scooby and Shaggy (and from that point on Scrappy), and Mystery Inc. doesn't exist. The fact that Fred, Daphne, and Velma had been removed from the shorts probably made that easier (although they continued to live on, to an extent, as background silhouettes in some of the title cards). * The standard title card that had started to be used regularly about halfway through The Scooby-Doo Show, where Mystery Inc. run out of the Mystery Machine into a spooky mansion, had been modified to include Scrappy, trying to get Scooby and Shaggy into the same spooky mansion, and also to downplay Fred, Daphne, and Velma, by putting them in the background as (running) silhouettes, the same as mentioned above. * The animation of this episode, and the other episode Evanier wrote, have been noted as having better animation than the episodes that weren't written by him.Evanier, Mark (June 30, 2013). Scrappy Days: The Birth of Scrappy Doo and What I Had to Do with It: Chapter Six. News From ME.com. Cultural references * When the stack of comics falls on Scooby, one of them has Yogi Bear on its front cover. Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches * None known. Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities * None known. In other languages Home media * Scooby-Doo! and Scrappy-Doo!: The Complete Season 1 DVD set released by Warner Home Video on April 28, 2015. Quotes References External links * TBA Category:Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo (first series) episodes Category:Season premieres Category:Series premieres